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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Keep faith and hope alive, and keep family bonds strong, even in the darkest circumstances, because reunion and return to Hashem are possible. Rabbi Paysach Krohn tells the true story of Rabbi Mordechai Victor and his sons Yitzchak and Avraham, who were separated during the Holocaust and reunited in Milan through an unexpected chain of events.
Key Points
- Rabbi Mordechai Victor, a rav in Dobrish, Poland, was deported with his wife and four children by the Nazis in 1940; his wife Rachel was killed along with a group of women in July 1944.
- At selection, the girls stayed with their father while the two boys, Yitzchak (24) and Avraham (15), were separated from them, because the boys were considered strong and more likely to survive in labor camps, while the father went with the weaker girls.
- Before parting, Rabbi Victor told Yitzchak to keep his eyes on Avraham and make sure they both survived together; these were the last words the family heard.
- Yitzchak met Pesha, the daughter of a cousin from Dobrish, searching for her husband. He told her he had seen her husband die, and gave her a written letter confirming it so she would not be an agunah (unable to remarry under Jewish law).
- That letter led Pesha to a young man in Bergen-Belsen, and when she asked the rav for permission to marry, she showed the letter and mentioned she had recently seen Yitzchak alive in Milan; this revealed the boys' survival to their father.
- The reunion happened at the Milan train station after Rabbi Victor was freed from Bergen-Belsen, about three months later, with help from Rabbi Yaakov Griffel of the Jewish rescue committee in Milan.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives no step-by-step instructions. The actionable message is to keep close family bonds and to look after one another, as Rabbi Victor asked his son to do, and to hold onto hope and faith through hardship.
- Rabbi Paysach Krohn ends by framing the story as a message that Hashem calls all Jews to return, and that both the Father in Heaven and the people are looking for each other.
- The boys worked under harsh conditions in a labor camp for about a year, becoming frail, thin and pale before liberation.
- Pesha had searched for three years through camps and displaced persons camps before meeting Yitzchak.
- The rav's recognition of his son came only because of the letter Yitzchak wrote; without it, the father might never have learned the boys were alive.
Bottom Line
A chance encounter and a written letter, prompted by compassion, reconnected a family torn apart by the Holocaust, showing how faith and kindness can bring people back together.
